Environmental Information Regulations
What are the Environmental Information Regulations?
The Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR) came into force on 1 January 2005 and give members of the public the right to access environmental information held by Public Authorities, which include Huntingdonshire District Council.
The regulations cover information on the state of the environment, such as:
- Air, water, soil, flora, fauna (including humans),diversity, genetically modified organisms
- Information on emissions and discharges, noise, energy, radiation, waste and other such substances
- Measures and activities such as policies, plans, and agreements
- Reports, cost benefit and economic analyses
- The state of human health and safety, contamination of the food chain
- Cultural sites and built structures (as they may be affected by environmental factors)
Requests can be made in writing or verbally to:
FOI Requests
Pathfinder House
St Mary’s Street
Huntingdon
PE29 3TN
Or email us using the link on the right
Tel no: 01480 388388
Your request must include your name and address and details of the information required.A reasonable fee can be charged, as detailed below.
Do public authorities always have to give me the information I request?
Although the EIR creates a strong presumption in favour of openness, Regulation 12 does provide public authorities with some grounds for refusing to disclose environmental information. All exceptions in the EIR are subject to the public interest test. This means that even though information may be covered by an exception, public authorities must still disclose unless the public interest in withholding the information outweighs the public interest in disclosing it.
The Council will respond to the written request within 20 working days of you submitting your request and will advise you:
- Whether we hold the information
- If a fee will be charged
- Provide you with the information (after any relevant fee has been paid), unless an exemption applies.
- Fees
The Regulations permit the Council to charge such sum as it considers reasonable for making environmental information available except in instance mentioned below:
- Access public registers or lists of environmental information
The Council reserves the right to charge for the following activities:
- Determining whether we hold the information requested
- Locating the information, or a document containing the information
- Retrieving the information
- Extracting the information from documents containing it
- Other costs of making available the information (e.g. supervision of scanning and photographing of documents, postage and photocopying costs)
- Postage and other means of transmission (e.g. CD-Roms) will be charged at cost and photocopying at 10p per A4 sheet
Complaints
If you are dissatisfied with the response from the Council you may submit a written complaint to the Council.
Please send your complaint to:
FOI Requests
Huntingdonshire District Council
St Marys Street
Huntingdon
Cambs
PE29 3TN
If after using the complaint scheme you are still not satisfied you may contact:
The Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone 01625 545 745.
Email the ICO using the link on the right.